


A Familiar Spirit

by wobblyheadeddollcaper



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Daemons, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:50:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4987252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblyheadeddollcaper/pseuds/wobblyheadeddollcaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I am always very happy My Dear Eliza when I can steal a few moments to sit down and write to you. You are my good genius; of that kind which the ancient Philosophers called a familiar; and you know very well that I am glad to be in every way as familiar as possible with you.” Alexander Hamilton, 1798</p><p>His Dark Materials AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Familiar Spirit

For the first few years after they arrived Linguisette took chill in the cold New York winters, so Alexander squandered much of his small hoard of savings on extra firewood, or drinks so that he could sit next to a warm tavern fire. She would curl against his breast, black eyes huge in the candlelight, watching Hercules’s bold rat and Lafayette’s strutting gamecock questing about the tavern floor.

He sometimes wondered, before Yorktown, whether Lafayette might have told General Washington about the weakness of his tropic-blooded daemon, whether that was why he was being kept away from command. Washington would surely be too shrewd to keep him as his aide-de-camp just for his daemon’s health. He dismissed the idea each time, and every so often it would return, prompted often as not by the sight of Aaron Burr’s sleek stoat in brown or white. After Yorktown, Linguisette no longer felt the chill.

“Truly?” Burr said sceptically, as she walked on all fours through the snow at Hamilton’s side. Serine in her winter white coat ran ahead.

“We helped win Yorktown. Perhaps it’s because this is entirely our country now - she’s at home.” He changed the subject after that. Revealing your private thoughts to Burr was like throwing them down a bottomless well, the lack of echo somehow disquieting.

His daemon gave him many advantages as well as frailties. Linguisette could write, her clever hands could hold a quill as long as it was not large. She was slower than he, but when the two of them wrote at once they could outpace any lone writer. Their handwriting was similar, though hers was less neat. She was thus more often the one who wrote their private letters.

*

When they were called to serve in the cabinet Alexander began to dress more finely, knowing that he could do so without imperilling his next meal and without taking from Eliza’s dowry – fair enough to use that for the house and the children and even his troops, but not, he felt obscurely, for his own clothing. Eliza had smiled indulgently, would press him to wear a finer silk neckcloth because she saw the pleasure it gave him. Linguisette had tried some of Adrius’s jewelled collars in private, to see if she would like them, but they were too heavy.

“No matter,” she said, a little downcast.

“You don’t want to look like a pet anyway,” Alexander said, cuffing her a little too roughly around the head. They both flinched a little.

“You get to peacock enough for the both of us,” she snapped back.

“Oh, go boil your head.”

“Boil yours. Or better yet, go and re-write our missive to Madison, we need a fair copy to send.” She waited until he sat down at his desk before packing the collar away again as neatly as if she had never touched it.

“Laurens’s Hypatia wears a collar,” she mumbles sulkily. “And don’t call Adrius a pet.”

“She’s a dog. It looks workmanlike on her.” He dips his quill in the inkpot and does not look at her. “And yes, that was wrong of me. Don't tell him.”

She sniffed. "Only because I love him."

"Little wretch." He smiled at her fondly. "Come help me tell Madison all the ways he is wrong."

"We don't have enough paper," she says wryly, leaping up onto his shoulder.

*

Alexander was almost sure no-one else’s daemon took part in politics the way his did. He tried to speak for both of them, but when they became impassioned she would weave her voice in with his, making two arguments out of one – rather as Madison did for Jefferson. Jefferson had once said Hamilton was a host unto himself, and though it had been meant for an insult he could not help but take pride in it. 

“You would be an easier opponent if you confined yourself to one voice,” Washington said.

“I- sir, I don’t quite know whether you’re telling me to keep her dumb or let her speak more.”

“You want your enemies to have an easy opponent?” Calpurnia said, ruffling her feathers. “If she is not misrepresenting you – which she does not – then use her. I only wish I could help George so.”

Washington smiled. “You do very well for a standard, Calpurnia. Content yourself.”

They were good years, when he looked back at them – some lapses aside. The Washington years, when Alexander Hamilton had forged his adopted country into a shape both useful and elegant, though more useful than elegant. Calpurnia, the great bald eagle, had in time become a more permanent standard than they could ever have dreamed of before independence.

*

Philip had died from a shot not at his body, but at little Junilla. Murder, not the semi-sanctioned clean shot of a duel but an ugly death. Eliza cried bitterly at the funeral, Adrius silent except for the occasional whimper. At night she would tell Alexander to leave her bedroom, but he could not make himself walk away from her tears.

“Why can you not...just leave me be, go.”

“Because I feel it too. I’d trade places for him in a heartbeat, you know. Our beautiful son, your gift.”

“My lovely Junilla,” Adrius said raggedly. He turned and snapped at Linguisette, who held still as his jaws closed on her arm.

“Bite, darling, go on,” she said softly. “It already hurts so much.” Adrius let go, and Linguisette ran her hands through his fur, her tail coiling around him in useless comfort.

*

The monkey in the portrait of Alexander Hamilton that hangs in the Smithsonian is a little larger than she was in life, her hands less delicate, her eyes more calculating. She does not look like a tropical creature. Eliza had never liked the portrait, but there had not been time in the press of business for him to sit for another.

**Author's Note:**

> Hamilton's daemon is a capuchin monkey. Eliza's is a Puli (hungarian sheepdog). Laurens has a Saint Bernard dog. Philip Hamilton's daemon is a raccoon.


End file.
